


100 Watts

by Dassandre



Series: What the Water Can Carry [5]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dementia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Illnesses, M/M, but not in the way you think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 01:30:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15450381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dassandre/pseuds/Dassandre
Summary: A phone call to Q’s personal mobile at half two in the morning -- he was still at Six having finally finished up with 009’s mission in Asuncion  -- and suddenly everything was far from fine.





	100 Watts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Boffin1710](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boffin1710/gifts), [AsheTarasovich (natalieashe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalieashe/gifts), [springbok7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/springbok7/gifts).



> Largely catharsis, this is one of those stories that had to be written. And for those for whom it has been written, I'm quite sure they know why. 
> 
> Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!
> 
> While there are some similarities between this story and part three of the series, "21 Grams" was based in fiction, but "100 Watts" is based in fact.
> 
>  
> 
> It's not been betaed nor Brit-picked, so all errors have been fed, watered, and fertilized along with the rest of the prose.

"Is it more painful to forget or to be forgotten?” 

~ Joyce Rachelle

* * *

  
  
  
He stood just inside the hospital room door, out of the way so he did not impede the actions of the nurse as she completed the late night check of her patient.  Far from the first night he had observed her so, he was as ever impressed with her economy of motion: her movements were brisk and efficient from years of practice yet still gentle.  Lily was one of those rare souls who hadn’t let the overwork, poor pay, and neverending bureaucracy snuff out the passion that had driven her to the profession to begin with, and given the circumstances, he was grateful for her.

The lights were dim with respect to the late -- early, really -- hour, and he realised he’d never seen her during the day.  Though he’d known her for weeks now, he probably wouldn’t recognise her in the street in daylight when the shadows weren’t clinging to the contours of her face.   

“Oh.  Evening, Mr. Bond.  I didn’t see you come in.  Dr. Watson left not five minutes ago.”  The ginger nurse had caught sight of him when she turned from the bed to the computer on its dedicated worktop.  She logged in and entered various notations into the digital chart. Initial entries complete, she turned and gave him a second, more assessing look along with an appreciative smile.   

“My, don’t _you_ clean up nicely.  Much finer, and I’ll have no choice but to leave my man for you.”  Her voice was quiet yet clear over the gentle hum of medical equipment in the room.

“Better off with your Kevin, I think, Lily,”  he chuckled and pulled at the bow tie that hung loosely along either side of the open neck of the finely woven, white button down.  Shoving it in the outer pocket of his woollen top coat, he shrugged out of the garment and hung it and his long red scarf on the hook on the back of the door.  “Younger model. Certainly a less broken one.” He gestured with the walking stick in his hand before planting its rubber tip firmly on the lino and limped heavily into the room.

“Forty-nine is _not_ old, and you’re far broken, Mr. Bond.  But certainly tired, tonight, I think.” Ever kind, Lily helped him ease into the chair at the side of the bed.  The man within slumbered on, completely unaware of his late visitor, a sign that the night had so far been a smooth one.   

“Do you think I’ll ever convince you to call me Q?”  he asked, looking up at her, eyebrow cocked.

“Q’s a letter, not a name.”  Lily turned back to the computer and continued her charting.  

They spoke in hushed tones born out of practiced necessity.

“Technically, it’s a designation, as you know, but one of which I’m rather fond.  Besides, every time you say ‘Mr. Bond,’ I feel the need to look ‘round for James.”  

“He at home with the bairns tonight?” Lily asked.

“Bairns,” Q chuckled.  “As much as a teenager and two eight-year-olds can be considered ‘bairns.’ But, no.  They’re with Alec and Grey tonight. James is finishing up this thing.” Q tugged at the lapel of his midnight-blue dinner jacket.   

Though long-since retired from the field, James’ position as the primary trainer of new agents was of a high enough profile in an otherwise very low-profile profession that he was called upon to ‘press the flesh’ with MPs and other politicians even more than Q as Quartermaster was.  Mallory had deemed tonight’s ‘to-do’ essential in forging alliances in advance of the upcoming budgetary cycle, so the Bonds had pulled out their party togs for the night. Citing very real and demonstrable exhaustion along with the current Holmes family crisis, Q had managed his escape after the first round of drinks and nibbles -- M was ever cognizant of the importance of keeping his Quartermaster healthy -- but the SIS chief insisted James stay through til the end.

“It’s as much about the mythos as the man, Bond: 007 in the flesh,” Mallory had said, having no trouble in exploiting James’ legendary status to those with a high enough security clearance to know about and appreciate it.  

Q stretched out his left leg and bent over the limb to massage the thick scar tissue beneath the wool for several minutes whilst Lily went about her business.  He should have worn the brace and to Hell with what it did to the line of the dress trousers. Too much time on his feet this week combined with unusually frigid February weather …  it hadn’t hurt like this since those months he’d spent in rehab after the accident that by all rights should have killed him.

“Here,” Lily said, suddenly beside him.  She handed him a paper cup of ice water and rattled a small bottle she had lifted from the inner pocket of his overcoat:  his painkillers.

He took both.  “How did yo-”

“James asked that I be on the lookout for this,” she said, pointing at his leg.  “Said he thought you were overdoing it again but wouldn’t take your pills unless they were put directly in front of you.  Told me where to find them.” Lily took Q’s walking stick from where it rested against his thigh and hooked its staghorn handle over the side railing of the bed.  Close to hand but out of the way.

 

“So, those are now directly in front of you.  Take them.”

Q hesitated as he always did with the pills.  He hated the effect they had on his mind, wrapping it in cotton wool.  He could still think, but it was slower, muted, and so he rarely took them, choosing to deal with the pain as best he could.  Tonight, however … He popped two of the pills and drained the cup of ice water while Lily pulled over another chair, placed a pillow on top of it, and with his permissive nod, carefully lifted Q’s leg so it rested comfortably on the seat.  “Not done yet,” she said. She grabbed a blanket she had placed on the end of the bed and skillfully wrapped it around Q’s leg.

“Oh dear God,” Q moaned, melting into the chair as a moist heat seeped through the wool of his trousers to penetrate the brutalised tissue beneath.  Lily, bless her, had used a heated blanket. The kind you can only get in hospital. “Okay, yeah. Leave Kevin. Come live with me.”

She chuckled.  “What about James, then?”

“What do I care?  He doesn’t have these.”  Q gestured at the blanket.

“Thrown over for a knitted blanket.  How about I get you the manufacturer information for the warming cabinet, instead.”

“Okay.  Yeah, that’ll do.” Q shrugged, capitulating to the more reasonable idea.  “How was his day?” he asked.

“Highs and lows.” Lily double-checked the bags of saline and antibiotics that hung on their pole next to the bed, ensuring that the lines were free of kinks to deliver their life-sustaining liquids.  “Slept a good part of the day, Davy said. I’m a bit surprised he’s still sleeping now, but his body will know what he needs to get better. Book is there on the table where you left it last night. Now you rest your leg, but you know what to do if you need me, Mr. Bond.”  Lily slipped quietly out of the room, pulling the door mostly shut on her way out.

Q nodded absently, eyes trained on the man asleep in the bed.

 _Get better_ , she’d said.

An optimistic but not realistic hope.

Q ran his hand over his mouth, fingertips scratching at the hair of his goatee as he tended to do when lost in thought.  

The whole bloody thing had been a cock-up from the start.  Routine dental surgery led to an infection that ate away at the bone resulting in a fractured jaw demanding yet another surgery involving plates and pins to put it all back together again.

“He’s in good health,” the oral surgeon had told them, “but given his age, we want to keep Mr. Holmes under anesthesia the least amount of time possible.”

A scheduled two-hour surgery had lasted nearly three times that long.  Siger Holmes survived the procedure, but he wasn’t the same as he had been before it.  

Things had seemed okay, at first.  

Siger passed all the post-operative checks in recovery, was moved to a private room where the nurses had him up and walking in short order.  A bit unbalanced, but nothing to be concerned about. He was groggy, but that was to be expected, too, they’d said.

Two scheduled nights in hospital and another at James’ and Q’s new home in Westminster-- Mummy and he had been visiting when his jaw broke eating Victoria Sponge for pudding, so fragile the bone had become -- before journeying back home to Sussex for his continued recovery.  Mummy had been at the hospital for the duration, unwilling to leave her husband’s side. John and Rosie had been there at _her_ side, reporting out in texts to the rest of them how things were proceeding.  Siger had insisted they all go about their daily business. Things would be fine, he assured.

Things had still seemed fine when James dropped round to pick up Mummy and bring her back to the house after a long day’s waiting.  Her husband asleep, Mummy quietly kissed his forehead, murmured something in his ear, and squeezed his hand. Ensuring, too, that his book and mobile were close to hand, Violet then took James’ arm down to the car.

A phone call to Q’s personal mobile at half two in the morning -- he was still at Six having finally finished up with 009’s mission in Asuncion  -- and suddenly everything was far from fine. His driver had him across the river and at St. Thomas’ in a trice; Q was escorted as quickly as his leg would permit to the Alexandra ward where he found his father still in the panic that had spurred the confused and muddled call to his youngest son.  

“Remy!  Remy, thank God!  Where am I? Who are these people?  Why have they brought me here?! They took me away!  They’re going to hurt me! Where’s Mummy? Where _is_ she?  Do they have her, too?”  

Siger spoke in a rush, his normally calm, tranquil eyes were bright with fear.  He grabbed Q by the wrist and pulled him to the bed with such desperate force that Q’s walking stick clattered to the floor.  His father clasped Q to him like a shield against the danger he perceived from the nurse and the HCAs in the room. Q waved them off as he tried to calm his father, trying not to break down himself as this kind, loving, iron-willed man -- who had stood stalwart in the face of more dangers and tragedies, both naturally occurring and engineered, than most men could conceive -- shook and trembled in Q’s arms.

It took over an hour for Q to soothe his father, reassure him that he was in no danger and that the nurses were there to help not to harm.  Siger eventually slept -- fitful in spite of the light sedation -- and after a quick call to James who would contact Sherlock and Mycroft and come by with Mummy in the morning, Q settled into the chair at his father’s side, prepared to help his father fight the demons should he wake confused again.   

No.  Things were _not_ fine.  Not by a long chalk.  

By the next morning, it was clear that the sharp as a tack, he-who-said-more-by-saying-little, unwavering patriarch of the Holmes family was gone.  Dementia, non-existent before the surgery, had set in literally overnight. Whether from the anesthesia or the procedure itself, Siger had no memory of anything that had happened to him after Sherlock and John picked them up at London Victoria two days before he broke his jaw.  He needed multiple reminders of what had happened when he woke up each morning and after any naps he took, else the panic set in. He distrusted the nurses on sight and grew combative when they tried to calm him, so with the permission of the medical staff, the family took round the clock shifts to sit with him.

The infection that had eroded the bone causing the fracture had not responded to conventional treatments and required an intensive, twice-daily IV administration of antibiotics akin to a chemotherapy treatment.  In spite of that, however, the infection continued to advance. By his fifth day in hospital, the tall, vibrant Siger Holmes could no longer walk on his own and had difficulty sitting up in bed. He slept for increasing stretches of time, and when he was awake was confused more often than not.

Mummy remained strong but the stress of watching her beloved partner of 57 years fail so completely began to take its toll on her, too.  It took some doing, but it had finally been Alec Trevelyan and his husband Greyson Holmes, Siger’s youngest brother, who were able to convince Violet to limit her visits to two hours, twice a day to conserve her strength.  There was always someone on hand at the Bond home in Westminster ready to drive her to St. Thomas’ in an emergency.

In addition to Mummy, Alec and Grey, Sherlock with Rosie, and even Mycroft sat with Siger during the day.  James, April Witkowski -- the Bond children’s biological mother -- and John Watson traded off the first half of the overnight shift with Q always sitting with his father in the small hours.

“He’s dying,” Q said to John on the twelfth night.  They sat side by side in the darkened room but each looked out on the London nightscape rather than upon the man in the bed.

“He is.”

“The others haven’t accepted it, have they?”  Other than his husband, John was the only other one Q had spoken with in recent days.  His schedule at Six was unpredictable at best, but R had guaranteed her presence in Q-Branch each night to ensure Q could sit with his father for a few hours.

“James has, but no.  None of the others. Even Sherlock and Mycroft are being deliberately blind to it,” John sighed.  “I’m … well, _glad_ , isn’t the right word, but I guess … I’m relieved that you aren’t.”

“I deal in death, John,” Q said stoically.  “Far more than my brothers and even more than James did as a Double-O.  I know it when I see it, but this …”

“It’s different.”

“Yeah.”  Q coughed.  He’d always found John easy to talk to, but … it was hard, this.  Dementia scared him. He could admit that. It was what he feared most for himself, for his future -- especially after the aphasia he had suffered after waking from his coma years ago -- so seeing it play out in his father was torturous, but Q refused to run from it.  He would be here for his father. “Mummy says he’s a tad clearer-headed during the day. He doesn’t even know it’s me most nights, you know.”

John did know.  “It was similar when my mum died.  She’d been ill for some time, but it wasn’t until the last few weeks when her mind … well, it wasn’t _her_ anymore,” he explained.  

Just as _this_ wasn’t Siger Holmes.  Not really. Not in the ways that mattered.  His quiet support, his dry sense of humor, his superior knowledge of the trivial and the mundane that weren’t all that trivial or mundane, his unfathomable cravings for American biscuits and gravy, his unparalleled knowledge of World War II history, his unfailing love for a small boy who silently feared he’d never measure up to his elder brothers  ...

“Remy,” John turned in his seat to look at Q who met his gaze in spite of the dim light, “I’ve not shared this with Sherlock because, as much as I love him, he’s still far too analytical for his own good, and he’d _never_ believe it, but, Q … there’s going to be a moment.  It’ll be quick, so you’ll have to be on the lookout for it, but you’ll know it, and you’ll see that _he_ knows you’re here for him.  That moment will be _so_ important for each of you.  It won’t make everything alright, it won’t change the situation, but it will be the memory you take forward with you from all of this, and _that_ is what will make it easier once he’s gone.  Do you understand?”

“Yes.  I think so,” Q had said, but it would take another five nights before he _knew_ he understood.  And as he sat there in his father’s room in the rumpled pieces of his dinner suit with his leg elevated and wrapped in a warm blanket, he had the epiphany that while John Watson may not be the smartest of them, he was by far the _wisest_ of their entire lot.   

“Remy?”

Q’s head popped up.  “Papa?” He shook off the doze he’d slipped into whilst in thought and took his father’s outstretched hand in his.

“What time is it, my boy?” Siger’s voice was weak but lucid.

“Just after three, Papa.”

Siger looked around the room, and it was clear to Q he was actually _seeing_ what was around him, taking in his situation.  “Been here a while, haven’t I?” he said, nodding at the flowers and cards and balloons that decorated the far wall.

“Some time, yes,” Q replied and he swallowed tightly against the unexpectedly firm squeeze of his father’s hand on his.

“And you?”

“A few hours.”

“But not just tonight.”

“No, sir.  Every night.”

Siger frowned slightly at his son’s answer.  It was a look Q was quite familiar with for his father used it whenever he was considering news he wasn’t sure he cared for but was willing to accept nonetheless.  Siger looked again at his youngest.

“You’re not going to leave are you?” Something like fear tinged Siger’s tone, and Q rushed to reassure him.

“No, Papa.  I’ll be here til morning. I won’t leave you.”

Siger’s responded with a blinding smile.  Incandescent, it attacked the darkness that had seeped into Q’s heart, driving it from even the deepest nooks and recesses.  Even the ache in his leg eased in the momentary light of his Papa’s smile.

“Will you read to me for a while, then?” Siger asked, nodding at the book on the overbed table.

“I’d be happy to, Papa.”  Q squeezed his father’s hand once more and took up the book.  He flipped back to the beginning, for whilst he’d been reading aloud from it for days now, his father had slept through it all.

It was the first book he ever remembered Papa reading to him, and though he’d been able to read it by himself, cover to cover, before his third birthday, he had always insisted Papa read it to him whilst he was ill.  It had been far better than the books about sodding, stabby bees that Sherlock had always forced upon him.

Turning on the small book light attached to the cover, Q settled himself into his chair, cleared his throat, and began to read _their_ book for his father.

“‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.  Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat:  it was a hobbit hole, and that means comfort …’”

 _Thank you, John_ , Q thought as he read aloud.  

Thank you for this moment.

 

* * *

 **Word of the Day Prompt:**  
  
_**Incandescent**_ (adj):  (of light) produced by incandescence; glowing or white with heat; intensely bright; brilliant; masterly; extraordinarily lucid; aglow with ardor, purpose, etc.:

Their boat seemed to be sailing on the bosom of an _incandescent_ stream.

~  _The Downfall_ ; Emile Zola

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you thought. Comments are love, comments sustain this needy writer, and comments just plain make me happy.


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